What Are We All Playing This Weekend?
WELL?
There's something very pleasing about the ritual of opening wine. Something dignified and calming. After a long week, it's a moment to slow down and simply enjoy the sensations of opening wine. A civilised moment. (Pinky out.) Some will talk of the cheeky rustle of foil on a fine Champagne, or the yielding of the cork in a vintage Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but me, my favourite aspect is the force with which the first gush of plonk squirts out the goon bag. Slàinte!
Oh yeah, also something about video games?
Adam: I'll be playing XCOM 2. You probably won't be playing XCOM 2 but please don't hate me, even though I'll be playing it all day all night. Remember what they say about the joy of anticipation and all that. Look - I just typed 'waiting happy' into Google and Andy Warhol replied. He wouldn't lie to you. I will be taking a short break at 3pm Saturday to watch Bury FC - they're playing Hull in the FA Cup and that's Quite A Big Deal.
Alec: I bounced hard off Tomb Raider's main campaign, because of its failure to reconcile the rampant silliness of surviving falling off a mountain 48 times in five minutes, or hunting endless squirrels because the world's greatest explorer forgot to pack any Tracker bars, with its joylessly serious plot. But I am quite enamoured of its plot-lite Expeditions, particularly the Endurance mode in which Lara risks starvation and freezing to death in addition to dealing with spike traps and men-with-guns. Also I can turn her into vampire or an ancient greek knight or have her be on fire or all the time or OH GOD WHY CAN'T THE MAIN GAME LAUGH AT ITSELF A BIT. Anyway, I'll be doing more of that.
Alice: I'm torn on whether or not I'll head down to That There England to sing with my old choir before our swimming pond is savaged by dam works, so I'm mostly planning to have a quiet Saturday and get a nice early night in case I want to head down. Might play 80 Days on the journey? Or I never did play the Monument Valley DLC. Writing this on Friday night, I'm very aware that everything in me is screaming that I should go. I miss them a lot.
Graham: In this week's Steam shuffle, I uninstalled every game I had already played. I had hoped this might cause me to play more of those games I hadn't yet made time for, but instead I've simply been playing nothing at all. So my answer is: I'm going to close Steam, open uPlay, and try The Division beta.
John: [No sightings of John last week mean he is off my radar. ALERT: WE HAVE A FERAL JOHN WALKER. He could be anywhere. Keep your eyes peeled, stay safe, and do warn us all if you spot him or his spoor. -ed.]
Philippa: This weekend I'm at the Malta Global Game Jam so I'm hoping to spend part of it playing some cool creations and part of it exploring some catacombs.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?